


Gleanings

by AStudyInAlgedonics



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Other, Rating may escalate later, Short & Sweet, The Softness(TM) is absolutely lethal, Very brief indirect mention of homophobic language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-06-27 15:23:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19793668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AStudyInAlgedonics/pseuds/AStudyInAlgedonics
Summary: A collection of shorts: the various things Aziraphale and Crowley know about each other, gleaned over millennia.Inspired by (and written with the gracious permission of the author) AtlinMerrick's Minutiae, over in the Johnlock kingdom.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Atlin, I know you said no credit needed, but honestly, I'm so thankful you let me write this.
> 
> My Good Omens sideblog is MortifyingOrdealOfBeingCrowley; my main is EmpyrealMoth. Please feel free to send prompts for this!

Aziraphale has, over the course of six millennia, been discorporated exactly six times, putting him on his seventh body. The auspiciousness of the number isn't lost on him, particularly after their good fortune despite their own worst efforts with Armageddon't.

#

Crowley is not superstitious. He's a _demon_ , for Go-Sat--Somebody's sake; what's he got to be superstitious _of_? But some things filter in. Some little trivias. The first time he wakes up with Aziraphale in their bed, he'll find himself spotted brown with freckles, constellated like the heavens he helped hang, because Crowley heard a mortal comment once, and his brain took it and held it somewhere he'd never acknowledge: _freckles mark where angels kiss_.

#

Crowley has been discorporated three times. Two of those incidents involve a stake to the heart. (Well, if you _will_ wander around remote little villages pale as anything, wearing sunglasses everywhere, then go to sleep in the local abandoned home for a week...)

#

Since Aziraphale realized his ~~friend~~ ~~hereditary enemy~~ opposite number has a bad habit of going to sleep for years or decades at a time, he's popped round wherever Crowley's holed up to hibernate to check on him during a disappearance. He also dusts--no, _look_ , let him explain, it wouldn't be Good, to let your ~~enemy~~ ~~partner~~ wily old serpent get dusty. How would that look, thwarting a bedraggled old demon covered in half a century's worth of dust just because he's decided to skip an era? (And the sneezing is enough to put an angel right off his lunch. Crowley isn't above generating bodily fluid if he can guilt and/or disgust Aziraphale with it.)

  
Just--look, if Gabriel asks, it's comfort to the souls in prison, all right? "Heap kindness on thine enemies' heads like burning coals". All very Biblical and Ineffable. _Perfectly_ Heavenly.

#

Crowley has only ever glued one coin to the sidewalk, _thank you_. And yes, it _is_ right outside A.Z. Fell and Co., Purveyors of Fine Books to the Gentry, and would you believe it works on Sandalphon _every time_?

#

Aziraphale knows Crowley would never wish away a single one of those dots. It made him blush the first night, seeing those little spots come up like flowers in spring as he let the ache of six thousand years finally bubble up into kisses freely given; but when Crowley woke, he looked at himself and then Aziraphale in wonder, all wide golden eyes and parted lips and forked tongue flickering consternated words he'd never bring himself to say aloud.

#

Crowley designed, handcrafted, and then wore the first pair of Heelies. Rest assured he knows the mistake he's made: remember, those snakeskin boots may or _may not be_ shoes, and he's had his heels run over _just_ often enough.

#

Crowley would never wish away any of Aziraphale's freckle-kisses. But Aziraphale vanishes them anyway, wiping away those spots so he can leave dozens of new ones, so that the ongoing proof of his love never gets lost in the crowd, so that Crowley can marvel at each new spot as they appear. Every morning, Aziraphale swears, Crowley will know he's loved. That he is cherished. And every night, Aziraphale makes sure to renew his vow. After all--Virtue never sleeps.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to send in prompts. 
> 
> I have a deep fondness for Aziraphale as the patron angel of the queer community.

Everyone in Soho knows about Mr. Fell. He's a pillar of the community, after all--so long as you aren't trying to buy a book, of course. But he always has a kind word or a warm cocoa to spare for the worn-out barista; for the exhausted English major not there to buy, only there looking for some kind of insight on Swinburne, maybe, _please?_ ; for the girls who walk in hand-in-hand, being followed by a man whose offers to fix them straight are getting more and more strident as the evening falls. Yes, everyone in Soho knows about Mr. Fell. He'll keep you safe, they say. He's always kept us safe.

#  
  
Oh, yes, everyone knows about Mr. Fell. And they know about the other one, too, the flash bastard in the sunglasses, wearing a snake tattoo at his jaw that almost seems to twist in the light as he listens to the girls' tale and the man still shouting outside. And as Mr. Fell makes cocoa, and offers them a cab--that he'll cover, of course, and make sure they get into safe! _without_ mentioning he'll see they get home safe, too, because that would be just a little _too_ much-- the other one will step outside for just a moment. And then there will be a man's scream. He'll come back in, theatrically tucking a lighter back into his jacket, smirking with too many and too sharp teeth, and Mr. Fell will tut in his throat but beam at him anyway, and so the streets of Soho are a little safer.   
  
("Nightmares are evil," Crowley will insist later. "Very Evil. He'll terrorize people anyway, in the mornings."  
  
Aziraphale will smile. "Yes, my dear," he'll say--and " _but he won't terrorize anyone like that again_ " will go unspoken.)  
  
#  
  
What none of them say: if that man had tried to follow those girls, if he'd laid one forceful hand on the door to A.Z. Fell and Co.--well. Crowley bites and needles and causes general mayhem. Aziraphale _protects_. He cuts right through the knot, no sword required: the Principality of the Eastern Gate is fire, fire and light and wings whose every feather is limned in steel and the grace and love of the Most High, and he will _not_ permit harm to anyone She has left in his care. Swords are one thing. Human hearts with every chamber lit by love are quite another.   
  
#  
  
Aziraphale is a tease.   
  
Crowley could say it til he was blue in the face (despite, of course, never needing to actually breathe), and no one would ever believe him, but Aziraphale is a bloody, bratty _tease_ about it, and the worst part is he _can't_ tell if it's on purpose or not. Whether Aziraphale genuinely thinks it's sexy, or whether he's doing it to crawl even further under Crowley's skin.   
  
He _has_ to know, surely. Even Aziraphale can't be that...well, can't be that _Aziraphale_. But Crowley has known his counterpart for six thousand years, and he knows perfectly well that Aziraphale _isn't_ the innocent he looks like, and that in fact his most innocent is his most bastardly, and still.   
  
He can't tell, with the tartan bedsheets and matching nightclothes. He really _can't.  
_   
#  
  
It's just a picture. Fake, probably. Almost certainly. Both Aziraphale and Crowley took credit for Photoshop: Aziraphale for the clever art people were already making with it and Crowley for just about everything else about it (he got a commendation for Adobe's licensing strategies, but none for memes, because Hell still doesn't really understand memes on the level they'd need to. Crowley doesn't like commendations enough to fancy explaining "more cowbell" to Beelzebub).   
  
Crowley _isn't_ mortally offended by it in any fashion. Crowley is _cool._ He's a demon. He's never mortally offended, he _is_ the mortal offense. Whole blasted point of him, innit?   
  
Which is to say: Aziraphale has a copy printed out and framed, the absolute angel, and every time Crowley comes by the shop he has to look at it. A blessed portrait of a snake in sunglasses entitled "Dashing Danger Noodle". 


	3. Chapter 3

Crowley’s rather miffed: in six thousand years of tempting, cajoling, compromising, and otherwise inflicting humanity (and one angel) with dubious choices, he’s never quite equalled _The Apple_. 

The Apple being, of course, one made of gold, inscribed with ‘ _to the fairest_ ’, and thrown into a party of spirits temporarily given authority over Greece and feeling exactly as responsible for it as teenagers given charge of their parents’ house in a 90’s high-school movie. Not that keggers would be invented as such for centuries yet, but the Olympians did their level best to jump the gun. 

He’d thought it would be a great joke. Make a few brawls between spirits, inexplicable celestial phenomena, weird dreams, terrified humans lashing out at each other in the miserable throes of religious crises—just his sort of mischief, maybe he’d even make apples a signature, you know, it’d be _stylish_. 

Crowley hadn’t reckoned on a whole _war_ about it.  
  
#   
  
Aziraphale knows Crowley’s a little touchy about apples. Aziraphale has his suspicions; he wasn’t in Greece when the war fell out, having had a little bit of a tiff with Apollo, but really? ‘ _To the fairest_ ’? It has Crowley’s fangy toothmarks _all over it_.

Where did you think that bit of speculation originated, about the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil being actually, possibly, a pomegranate instead? Or perhaps a pear[1]? We can thank one soft angel for it. 

#

Neither of them is responsible for Milton. As far as they can tell, Milton just happened.

If you were invested enough to ask Another, and if you could persuade Her to actually answer instead of just bloody _smiling_ at you, She might tell you about a very, _very_ faint connection between one Agnes Nutter and John Milton, one that would give him…oh, about 1/46th of a trace of prophecy. 

She never stopped loving Her rebels—they were just ready to move out of the house, as it were—and Ineffability doesn’t mean You can’t brag about Your children. Someone has to have some sympathy for the devil; why not God?  
  
#  
  
The chocolate full of chili peppers was, originally, a joke. Crowley hadn’t meant for Aziraphale to like it so well; in a fit of demonic pique he’d been trying to teach the angel a lesson about putting everything Crowley offeredin his mouth[2]. If Aziraphale was going to insist they were hereditary enemies, call him _foul fiend_ and pretend they were doing anything but negating each other, while still taking every temptation Crowley could ply him with, Crowley was going to damn well feed him _something_ hellish.[3].

Bizarrely, Aziraphale had loved it, and it had started a fixation on spicy foods Crowley had felt obligated to indulge for several decades. It’s never really gone away, of course; it’s just that then Aziraphale found sushi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1: Mmm. [return to text]
> 
> 2: A dangerous train of thought. Crowley is, unfortunately, the damsel tied to the tracks in front of said train, rather than the mustachioed villain in charge of it. [return to text]
> 
> 3: _Shaddup_. [return to text]


End file.
